Cookies
by LuckyShmucky
Summary: Ten years after he left Sunnydale, six years after she kissed him and told him she was still baking, five years after he found her in Rome with the Immortal..still baking. Is she finally ready? And will they eat cookies together? A/B of course! :
1. Chapter 1

**Cookies**

**Part 1**

So this was it.

She closed her eyes as the door shut quietly behind him, finding the sound oddly comforting. There was something to be said about coming full circle. There was something so liberating about discovering oneself in a land far from the one she'd grown up in. The thought gave her pause as she opened her eyes. No, that wasn't quite correct. She'd grown here too, or at least had _finished _growing. She'd finally finished _baking_. The corner of her mouth quirked up. Yes, as he walked out of the home they had shared for the past four years, she realized that she was finally ready to _live_. Her heart didn't break this time, even though she loved him, like it had split into a million pieces when she had said goodbye to her first lover a lifetime ago. If anything, her heart felt stronger, fuller, _complete_.

In all her life – her 28 years on earth – she had been with five men. Well – two men and three vampires. And with each she had found a piece of herself, she had discovered so many realities of life – and death – but she had never felt this contentment, this elation, this _peace_. She had truly loved only two of them, and only one would hold her heart forever. Only one of them was her _life's mate_. The corner of her mouth quirked further upward until she was smiling.

She walked around the cozy home she had shared with Roberto, her Italian lover, and her senses tingled as the last traces of his scent filled her nostrils. She still wasn't sure when she'd made the decision to end this relationship, but in all honesty _every_ relationship she'd ever had (Roberto was the only normal one) was doomed from the beginning. Every relationship was _always_ overshadowed by the fact that all roads eventually lead to _him_. And _he_ had been haunting her dreams every night for the past year, and she felt that she was finally done baking. Every ingredient was in her now: she'd had her teenage angst, her first love and heartbreak, her semi-normal human boyfriend, the crazy passionate affair with a crazy vampire, the crazy affair with a sane vampire, and a normal relationship with a normal human as a normal woman (without worrying about demons or apocalypses – just the _normal_ issues a _normal_ couple had to deal with).

Truth be told, she didn't regret a single moment. Not even the years spent apart – so achingly far apart – from _him_, because all those years had finally brought her to this moment, to this one realization (previously it had been a teenage delusion, at best) that_ he_ was her _only_, her _forever_. She'd had her normal life with beautiful Roberto, but while it was everything a woman could ever dream of (a tiny villa on the Mediterranean in a discrete Italian town with a gorgeous Italian man who only had eyes for her – really, it _was_ everything a woman could ever want), she wasn't that woman. She was _his_ woman who'd blossomed from being _his girl_ only because he'd done the most brave, knowing, selfless act, something she'd been too immature and short-sighted to do: he walked away. And somehow, miraculously, they had both survived without air (she was his air even though he didn't have breath) and had managed to save the world – multiple times – in the process. They had survived the impossible (because, really, how does a fish live without water?) because no matter how far the distance stretched between them, their souls were bound together _eternally. _Through all the changes in her life and within herself, there was always one common denominator: she was _his_, and that had proven to be more than enough. She'd always known it was more than enough, she'd just needed time to recall that rusty part of her certainty. It had taken _him_ more than two centuries to find her, so surely neither of them could fault her for taking a just decade to find herself.

She needed that decade to grow. To grow as a slayer, and now she no longer carried that burden. She needed that decade to grow as a daughter, a sister, a friend, and a lover. But mostly – mostly she needed that decade to grow as a woman. _He_ had been her first _everything_. So after she'd been with Riley – the human with an edge – she'd learned that her eternal love for _him_ was not born out of the danger. After she'd been with Spike (who could fault her, really, for he was the craziest, most devilish, most adorable punk-rock Brit to walk the earth – and here she paused for a moment to pay respects to his undead life), she knew it wasn't the vampire, or the danger, or both, that had molded her soul to _his_. And then she had been with the Immortal (perhaps an indication that this slayer had a slight vamp fetish?), but that had only proven that her slaying days were over (there _were_ some _other_ good vamps out there after all), and she'd felt the fight (and vamp fetish) fizzle out of her – yet she still remained entirely _his_.

And then there had been Roberto, from the second year she'd been in Rome until about an hour ago – the impossibly charming, absolutely gorgeous, and entirely human love of her life. She'd lived like a normal woman, in love with a normal man, for four normal years (the last of which was haunted by dreams of _him_), until something had stirred and shifted within her about a week ago, and she knew. So she told her sweet, beloved Roberto that it was over between them and that she was leaving forever. When he asked her to look him in the eye and tell him she didn't love him, she couldn't do it. She did love him, but that too was slowly fizzling as the burning passion, the aching desire, and the undeniable need to be with _him_ hummed throughout her veins.

"_Ciao, mi amore_,"she'd whispered as he shut the door. _Hello, my forever_, her heart hummed at the same instant, and she knew.

The only question was, did _he_?


	2. Chapter 2

**Part 2**

He stared at his cell phone as it rang, echoing loudly in the large, empty room. He didn't have much use for the damn thing anymore, at least not in his own home, where he would come at the end of a long, hard day (well – night, technically) to brood. But he always brought it with him instead of leaving it at the office in case there was an emergency. However, as of late (meaning for the past year, at least) there had been no emergencies, and even the regular work at the office was thinning out. He wasn't sure whether that was a good sign or bad one.

The shrill noise of his phone brought him out of his momentary thoughts, and at the fourth ring he picked it up and looked at the caller ID.

_Unavailable_.

He frowned and almost threw it back onto the mahogany desk when something rushed through him suddenly, a vaguely familiar electricity that made every hair on his body stand. It was a feeling from what seemed like a lifetime ago (he'd lived through a few of those by now), a memory of something he'd buried deep within him (like the demon that the gypsy curse chained in a dark crevice within so his soul could forever torment him) trying to bubble to the surface, but it was too dull and too distant to be fully registered. The phone rang again (he made a mental note to change the annoying ringtone) and the memory nudged again, this time less fuzzy and more electrifying, and he felt that shiver slice down his spine. He pressed the talk button on his brand new Blackberry (Giles had insisted he get himself one because it was the cool, business-thingy thing to do) and brought the gadget to his ear.

"Hello?" He said gruffly, half annoyed that the shiver still danced low in his spine. He was a goddamn vampire, he didn't shiver. _Well, at least not since…_

His frown deepened when he realized that the person on the other line was purposely staying quiet. "Hello? Who's there?" He asked again (demanded, actually), and he thought he heard the caller's breath hitch in her (_her?_) throat. And the low-laying shiver shot up his spine, like a crescendo in a beautifully tragic, timeless, _eternal_ symphony (he was familiar with just one, but even that had slowly faded through the years as he began to think _their_ symphony was not forever, but that it had actually forever _ended_), and he almost dropped the phone as though it was a cross burning his hand (he still wore one scar over his heart, or at least a hint of a scar because that, too, had faded with time).

"Talk," he ordered with much annoyance (more at the hairs that still stood up at the back of his neck than anything else), "or I'm hanging up right now." If he actually had breath, some irritating voice told him he'd be holding it right now as he waited for a response. The caller remained silent for another moment, and then the line went flat. And with it the crescendo fell, and he nearly trembled (it was something akin to the dull hum of orchestra instruments as they slowly stopped vibrating long after their masters finished moving their strings, waiting for the deafening applause). It took him a moment (minutes, at least) to recover from the unexpected prank call (what else was a prank call supposed to be other than unexpected, annoying, and just a little bit intriguing?) and he found it a little less than easy to lie to himself that the shock had come only from the unexpectedness of the entire incident. He found it a little less than easy to ignore the fact that every so often (meaning everyday), he thought of _her_. And it didn't help that the hitch of the caller's breath (maybe he'd imagined it?) was exactly like _hers_.

He knew that hitch better than he knew his own soul (which had done a fine job of tormenting him for almost two centuries now) – it was the same intonation (almost inaudible, but he had pristine vampire senses after all, which incidentally went into overdrive any time _she_ was in question) he'd heard (and would forever treasure) the first (and only) time he'd made love to her (well, the only time _she_ remembered – but he could never forget the pure ecstasy of loving her _all day long_); it was the same intonation he'd heard when Angelus had roughly kissed her at Sunnydale High the first time she'd realized what kind of a monster had been unleashed (his expression darkened as the chained demon growled viciously within him); it was the same intonation he'd heard when he hugged her after having his soul restored (now the demon whimpered in defeat); and it was the same intonation he'd heard when he had dropped to his knees and clung to her tiny form for dear life (the irony here was that he'd still been undead, but _she_ gave him _life_) after returning from hell.

All these memories assaulted him mercilessly, but he relished in the bittersweet pain they brought to his thoroughly battered, lonely soul. It was a soul that only _she_ had the power to mend, to love, to hold next to _hers_ forever. In moments of sheer lunacy he would delude himself into thinking that even now, with so much time and space wedged so painfully between them, their souls met every so often and continued to dance to the eternal song only they knew, and he took as much comfort from this thought as he could because it was the only thing that kept him going. She had given him that tiny sliver of hope the last time he'd seen her in Sunnydale (even though they both knew the cookie analogy was _completely_ ludicrous and, well, childish), and had even hinted at it the last time he'd seen her in Rome with the Immortal. His face darkened and the awakened hope dwindled (if only for a moment) when he realized he was no longer _special_. He was no longer the only vampire she'd been with, and certainly not the only vampire with a soul, so why _would_ she ever come back to him?

_Forever. How does forever sound?_

He could swear that he felt her breath against his face even now, and his cold, pale skin tingled. Were they really forever? Did they really have forever with each other, or was it some impossible fantasy he'd formed (one she'd stopped nurturing) and still carried with him wherever he went? Would it still be with him long after her bones had turned to dust in her grave and her soul enjoyed the ecstasy of heaven while his was tormented on earth _forever_? Something painful sliced through his heart (_heart?_), like that time in the alley when his soul was ripped from his body, and he knew. The day she died, he would die as well. She wouldn't be there to save him from the rising sun, there would be no magic snow, there would be nobody telling him he was loved _so much_. And his soul would go straight to hell.

The phone rang again, and he had half the mind to smash it against the wall.

"What. Do. You. Want?" He ground out furiously before the first ring was up. There was a hesitation on the other side of the line (but no hitch of breath – thank _God_ no hitch), and then a voice.

"We, uh…we have work to do. As in, we need to prevent an apocalypse. Possibly the last one."

He shot up from his leather chair immediately. Good. He definitely needed a distraction, and fighting some bad guys was definitely it. Plus, it was an opportunity to save the world, again.

~*~

She was still holding the phone in her hands long after she'd hung up, her heart thundering in her ears until she was sure it would explode. His voice was still the same, but it was laced with a tinge of melancholy she was not accustomed to hearing. Much like the time in the sewer when he had broken up with her (and had broken her heart) when he told her he couldn't take her into the light. Well, she decided, maybe that was just it. Maybe it was the other way around. Maybe _she_ needed to take _him_ into the light. And she was finally ready to do so.

No more brooding, no more misery, no more dead ends. She was finally, truly looking into the future and all she saw was _him_. All she saw was _them_.

_Forever_.


End file.
